1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wireless-communication system, and particularly relates to a wireless-communication system configured to relay a frame between wireless-communication devices, a wireless-communication device provided in the wireless-communication system, a processing method used for the wireless-communication system and the wireless-communication device, and a program making a computer execute the processing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
As electronics have become smaller in size and more sophisticated, a user can carry and use the electronic with facility. Therefore, environments where a wireless-communication device can be connected to a network, as required, so as to perform communications have been demanded. As an example of the above-described environments, a network temporarily structured, as required, that is, wireless-ad-hoc-network technologies have been developed. The wireless ad-hoc network includes no predetermined access point. Namely, in the wireless ad-hoc network, wireless-communication devices including a computer, a personal-digital assistant (PDA), a mobile phone, etc. are autonomously distributed and connected to one another.
In the above-described wireless ad-hoc network, broadcast signals such as broadcast packets are propagated in sequence via different wireless-communication devices. The above-described signal propagation is referred to as flooding. Since the communication range of the wireless ad-hoc network can be easily increased by adding another wireless-communication device to the wireless ad-hoc network, the flooding should be restricted by using a mechanism and/or a method of some kind.
A predetermined technology is used, as the mechanism and/or the method used to restrict the flooding. According to the predetermined technology, an upper limit is predetermined for the number of times the broadcast signal is transferred, and the entire network is flooded with the broadcast signals until the value of the transfer number reaches the upper limit. For example, according to Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocol proposed by Mobile Ad hoc Network Working Group (MANET WG) of Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the broadcast-signal transfer is restricted based on the transfer number, as disclosed in C. Perkins et al.: “Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) Routing”, RFC 3561, Network Working Group, IETF (http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3561.txt).